Published 4:00 am, Friday, May 2, 2003

Two former U.S. State Department employees and seven others, including residents of Union City and Sacramento, were indicted Thursday in a scheme to sell entry visas to immigrants from India and Vietnam.

The defendants are accused of conspiring to defraud the United States, bribing public officials and committing visa fraud in an 18-count indictment handed down by a federal grand jury in San Francisco. Some defendants were also charged with wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering.

"The complaint and indictment describe a fairly broad scheme over a two- or three-year period that involved quite a number of people, both in the U.S. and overseas," said Benjamin Wagner, an assistant U.S. attorney in Sacramento who is helping to prosecute the case.

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Wagner said none of the people involved in the scheme appeared to have ties to terrorism.

Among those charged are Acey R. Johnson, 32, of Port Orford, Ore., who had worked in the consular affairs section of the U.S. Embassy in Sri Lanka, and his wife, Long N. Lee, 51, who was a State Department foreign service officer.

According to a 130-page complaint unsealed Wednesday, the couple accepted "hundreds of thousands of dollars" between 2000 and 2003 in exchange for issuing visas to citizens of India and Vietnam.

Davinder Singh Bhullar remains at large and is believed to be in India, authorities said.

"The brokers collected substantial sums of money from the purchasing aliens/sponsors and forwarded substantial payments to Acey R. Johnson and Long N. Lee, or to members of Long Lee's family, for the purchased visas," Special Agent Jason Rosselot of the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service wrote in an affidavit.

From 2000 to 2003, the couple had unexplained deposits in various bank accounts that totaled more than $654,000, the complaint said.

Among other things, Johnson and Lee used proceeds from the scheme to buy a home in Oregon, according to Rosselot.

Authorities uncovered the scheme with the help of e-mails sent by the defendants, most of whom were arrested at 6 a.m. Tuesday.

In an unrelated case, Santa Clara County prosecutors said immigration consultant Olga Elvira Pardo, also known as Angelina Farfan, 38, of San Jose faces seven counts of grand theft for allegedly offering to invest money for friends and to help Spanish-speaking victims in obtaining legal immigration. She collected more than $72,000 from seven victims but did not follow through on her promises, authorities said.